Coming Alive
by Neftzer
Summary: *Now posting all past parts and going forward here.* Milady X Athos PRE-SERIES, who they are before they meet, their first meeting and on to their wedding. My own headcanons needed out and needed voiced. Here you go.
1. Athos

_A/N:_ Pre-series (will be in several parts)  
I guess I should put this on paper. I think about it enough on my own (originally published on tumblr as nettlestonenell)

 **Pt. I - ATHOS**

He will marry Catherine, he supposes. Surely that is their wish. And why should he not? She is aimiable enough in conversation, her ancestors place her in the right sort of class to make his father smile upon her eligibility. To make him approve of her becoming his eldest son's Comtesse.

They will expect him to do this when he returns, of course. And why shouldn't he? Take a wife and begin having sons. A son, who should one day also become Comte. A wife he has known and shared a friendship with since they were children. A chateau upon his quiet countryside holdings.

He felt nothing about the matter either way, he supposed. There were women, of course, more lovely, more alluring than Catherine. Richer women, more exciting women. There were handsomer, wealthier, better-titled men than he, after all. More exciting men living lives of greater excitement than did he.

And yet there was not another woman to whom he would have to explain so little about himself, his background, the paths his life was meant henceforth to travel. There was not a female he could ever recall (including his own mother) in whose company he felt quite so comfortable. So easy.

He did not question feeling so passionless about the decision. He felt passionless about everything. Where was there anything within the life of a country vicomte about which to feel passion? To feel danger? To excite zeal?

There was the sword, as always. There was life and death on the edge of a blade. If he felt alive at all–-if he had ever felt so–-it was only ever with a sword in his hand.

And yet his own pursuit of such a vocation was limited.

A Comte must know swordsmanship. He must carry a sword always at his side. He must have been given instruction in swordplay as a young man. But to put such lessons into practice? To duel? To cross swords with a foe intent upon one's ruin? No, Le Comte must not be so careless. His people depended upon him. His family.

He had told them he would be gone two weeks–-no, six. _Six_ , he has told his father, in the end, just before he went. _Outside of Paris_ , he had said-–deliberately vague. _There is a man I must see about…business_ , he had said.

His father was no fool. He, above anyone in the household, had known that his eldest son rose blisteringly early of a morning to practice parrys and thrusts, a new technique he had read about in some long-dusty text from the chateau's library. His father Le Comte knew this business would be to meet a particular swordmaster, to study under him as long as his eldest son thought he could without being too strongly reprimanded, without raising too many eyebrows, disturbing too greatly the calm waters of life near Pinon.

No one knew him here, this small, out-of-the-way crossroads, a forgotten stopover on the way to Paris. His family's name was known by some, his wealth by more, his title not at all. But none knew his mind, none were in his confidence. Here he was alone.

He had been to Court once, as a boy of twelve. His father having some rare business there. The child King received them, crying loudly throughout the audience. (Which his mother as regent oversaw anyway). That had impressed him. That he would be older than his King; wiser, perhaps. An elder brother. He had told Thomas this. Thomas had laughed at him. But Thomas laughed at everyone. Thomas, jolly in nature, pleased or charmed by everything.

When Thomas had laughed Athos had decided not to tell him the rest. Not to tell him of the King's Musketeers he had seen there in Court that day, their faces scarred from duels, battles, derring-do. The particular blue of their capes. The leather worn upon their shoulders distinguishing them as the first of all men in service to the King. He did not tell Thomas–-never told Thomas–-of having passed by, riding with the coachman through the backstreets of Paris, and seeing the garrison of these super-men, hearing the sound of steel on steel as they practiced with blades, the fine horses being ridden in and out of the place's gates.

He had felt something then. Later, weeks later, he had been taken by dreams in which he leapt from the coach, dashing away from his father, from returning to Chateau de la Fere, hiding in that garrison and begging whomever found him to let him do any menial task if only he might stay.

It was too late for him now, of course. (As if a life in that sort of service to the King had ever been an option.) He had traveled here, nearly into Paris, with no servants, and employed none at his lodging. To his Madame concierge he left his laundering, what he ate for early and late meals. Of a Sunday he went to what stood for Mass. But what he did most–-and best-–and most happily–hour after a hour, day after day under the tutledge of the master swordsman, all-but blind from age and poverty, was feel alive.

And attempt somehow to store up such feeling for the rest of the years of his life to come.


	2. Anne (Milady)

_A/N:_ This is Milady's part, of course. Before she was known as Milady.  
And we have a title for the trio: Coming Alive  
(Read Part I - ATHOS)  
This was published on tumblr under nettlestonenell

 **Pt. II - ANNE**

She should be exhausted. Her wits should have snapped with the constant strain and pitch of her life, living branch-to-branch-ever-necessary to be ready to jump to another tree, another ship, another man's arm almost since she could remember.

She slept very little, as always, and when she did it was not particularly deeply. A guard such as hers ought never be fully down.

Hers was a dramatic life, balancing her Fate on the edge of a blade: could she avoid same from slicing through it-through her thread? Or fraying it so she lost those very things that proved her appeal to men? Her looks? Her figure? Her intimate skills?

Having a sharp mind, a quick hand at pickpocketing, an understanding of manipulating a mark-all important things Sarazin had taught her as he placed her by his side and in his bed. But without physical allurements, useless to him-to anyone-he had often reminded her.

She was constantly attentive, senses alert. Perhaps it was a type of mania. Mania that in a gentleperson, or an aristocrat might be worrisome, but in a pauper orphan-sold to Sarazin by a mother who was shortly to die from drink and (possibly) regret-it was life. If one meant to keep on living it, and make the living of it worthwhile, and occasionally comfortable.

But nothing lasted. Not even her turn as Sarazin's favorite.

She had never really aspired to anything beyond the seat beside him, fetching, doing-whatever was asked of her. But the day came (the first of many) that another man-a compatriot of Sarazin's-offered something Sarazin wanted, and she was to be the price. And to help himself to double the profit, her lover-master sent her in payment, and fitted her out as his spy.

She had found leaving his side more uncomfortable than she had expected, but she spied well, and when that man was brought down she returned to Sarazin, but he found his passion for her in his bed had past (or was now tainted by the acts she had employed at his demand upon his rival), and he chose instead to make use of her again, in similar ways, with other men.

He had begun to fear she was becoming too well known, and he had no wish, he had told her-his tone attempting sympathy-for her to be known for the whore. So he began sending her out to inns and crossroads just beyond Paris where she had never been, honey-in-the-trap for rich men, for influential men on their way into or out of the city.

The best that could be said about her present lodgings just outside Paris was that they were not muddy, but only due to lack of rain. There was enough dust to stuff mattresses, to fall like snow. For all she knew the populace here farmed dust, harvested dust, so plentiful it was in supply. Nary a table nor a counterpane was free of it for more than moments.

To the people here she was a young widow, name of Anne. Anne's own family without standing, she had married an older man in his twilight years-to his family's disapproval. He had died not long after their wedding, and because she had borne him no child his family had tied up any living she might have had, any inheritance-in the courts.

(It was a simple name, Anne. Thousands wore it before or after their first name. It was not the name her mother had called her. She had almost forgotten that word part and parcel of trying to forget that woman's betrayal.)

That was Anne's story. Respectable young widow, pretty. Traveling to try and find family of her own that might take her back. Looking for a protector. It was not too long, not too intricate a story to keep track of, and in fact, she often liked to muse upon it, upon THAT girl; add embellishments to Anne's tragic tale. She got positively caught up in it from time to time, feeling sorry for Anne. Hoping that someday poor, unworldly Anne might find someone who would rescue her, hoping that Anne might find family to accept her again.

When a man in his travels did fall in with her, she ate well, slept (an invitation to their chamber was nothing to procure) in the best beds of the inns they visited, judiciously plundered his belongings for items of value or important papers Sarazin might make use of in blackmail or political maneuverings in the hours when she could not sleep and yet everyone else did.

And when she had taken what they had of use to her and to her master's interests, it was no difficulty to quarrel. The mention that Anne regretted following them to their bed, that she wished some promise from them-a position more permanent to be given her in their life-and like that, they were gone. Back to their wives, back to their mistresses. To their travels. Their work. Back to what stood for them as reality, and not idle folly and foolish whore-mongering with her.

It saddened her for the young widow in her cover story. But, in truth, she had not thought it made her feel any way at all about herself. She worked for Sarazin. Had for more than half her life. As master, she owed her life and upkeep to him. He provided for her between marks. She served his purposes. His benefit was her benefit.

She was between marks, now. But it had been awhile, longer than usual that she had stayed put in this place. It was more out-of-the-way than where she usually traveled, a satellite in orbit about Paris. And she had not been feeling well. Not like herself.

In fact, for the first time in her life she felt listless. Dim, if one compared her to candlelight-where she was usually flaring, a startling blaze.

There was a number of 'characters' hereabouts. Old women, ancient men, a few young couples. As a pious widow she was obligated to attend what stood for their primitive Mass, week after week as she waited-two weeks now-at one of the village's three inns, waiting to find her next carriage-wealthy lover inside-that would take her on to the next stop in that series of unending travels and intrigues Sarazin had set her upon.

The young couples would come to Mass, have the Father bless their children.

Children. Babies.

Now there was an unsettling thought.

Why did she not-had she not-taken what she had stolen from her last mark and returned to Paris, to seek out Sarazin, cash-out her booty, see if he had a better place to position her than here? Here where coaches almost never stopped, where the entire village population in total had less coin than did she?

Had she known? She did not like to think she had known.

She tried to remember if there was anything about-any symbol, any sign-she might have seen indicating this village might have a wise woman living amongst them.

After all, she now had a new task to complete.


	3. First Meeting

He stared at the soft muslin garment before him as warily as a hunter might trying to gauge the ferocity of his potential prey.

To one side was a folded stack of his clean laundry, returned to his room. As he had picked it up to place it off the inn's bed, THIS had fallen-slipped-out from among it.

A woman's shift.

But not just any woman's shift. He leaned in, suspiciously, to inspect its embellishments. They were many, and intricate. This piece of handwork had likely cost more than the concierge's entire cuboard of clothes. More than whatever they had paid for the small servant girl who kept their fires lit. It was a fine, richly-made bit of underclothes. A woman's underclothes.

He had not yet touched it.

He kept no servants here. Employed no man. There was no one to whom he could call out to have it taken away from him-to have this confusion, this mistake, set right.

And he was filthy. Covered, post-day-long lesson in the persistent dust of this place, mingled with the sweat his exertions of the day under the tuteldge of his master had conjured from him. Without removing his glove, he snatched at the intimate garment, the middle of it wadded into his fist, and opened the door to stomp his boots down and toward the steaming kitchen and someone who could relieve him of this distracting burden.

He opened the great door to the kitchen and (he hoped) to the inn's Madame Concierge and found her-and another woman. As with many things these days that were not sharply shiny and potentially deadly in the right hands, he paid little mind to the other female present. He had been in a condition since arriving not unlike that of the master swordsman he had come to study under: blindness. If it was not a sword, nor a threat to him that might need be fought with a blade-it interested him little if at all. If he ate he did not notice it. He ate only for strength. If he drank it was only to supply his body with the fluid depleted from his workouts. If he spoke it was to this blind master, to the blade in his hand, to the few people he needed assistance from in order to devote himself wholly to his enterprise. He was an island of obsession unto himself, unto his sword. He did not imagine he could ever feel any happiness greater.

Was this, he wondered at nights as his body lay, exhausted, being re-taught things it had thought it already knew-was this what it must be like to be born to play a violin-and never before have felt one in your hands? Was this passion? Was this finding yourself?

"My sir," the concierge looked up from where she was at folding other laundry, shocked to find the quiet boarder in her kitchen, her look of surprise matched only by the disconcerted expression upon his at finding himself here. Both were rendered uncomfortable.

"You have mistakenly left this in my room-" he said, his eyes scanning about the kitchen rather than meeting hers, his lips giving no name to item in his hands.

"I do not know what you mean, my sir. 'Twas your laundry I brought to you, just as you asked."

"No. I mean, yes. Of course you did. But this-which is not mine-was among it." He let part of the shift flow from out of his grip.

"How terribly awkward," he heard another voice in the room-the other person-a woman, her voice like muted chimes; dark but soothing.

His eyes snapped to where she was.

"It would appear that you have been given some of the laundry I asked madame to wash for me-"

The apples of her cheeks became brighter-tinged in red. Rather than giving her a blotchy complexion, it seemed to heighten the liveliness of her countenance. He had of course not intended to bring embarrassment upon anyone.

"I am-I am-that is-" he looked for somewhere to put it down, to get it out of his hands. The concierge did not offer to take it. The lady was several steps across the room, standing upon the lower steps of a back stair. And a table stood between them.

Far too long a moment passed while he still clutched the shift. His mind recalled to him the stitchwork upon it. He took it and put it down, rather clumsily-its neck lacings had become tangled with one of his gauntlets-on a table to his back, which was covered in unwashed parsnips.

"Please accept my apologies for-any imposition," he said, his eyes clearly wishing for the shade of a hat to hide his discomfort with the situation. "Please be assured, it was entirely without intent."

The lady gave the sort of nod and averted her eyes to show she accepted his apology. He did not wait for Madame Concierge to reply.

The door shut behind him, and the two women were now alone in the kitchen.

Several moments passed, as if both were waiting to ensure that he was not coming back.

"As agreed," the woman known as Anne said to Madame Concierge, extending a coin toward the older woman's hand. "One introduction he will surely not forget."

"Will my lady wish the shift washed again?" the innkeeper's wife asked.

Anne looked from her perch on the lower stair over toward her best undergarment. "I should think so. He may be rich, and handsome enough in the face, but besides being utterly backward he's positively filthy."

Despite her summation of the gentleman's shortcomings, she did not attempt to hide the satisfied smile now growing at her lips as she turned to travel back up the stair.

 **...tbc...**


	4. Second Encounter

And then: nothing.

No glances her way-not even furtively. This dust-encrusted swordsman who shared the inn with her, whom she had assured herself had coin enough to support her until she found her next target-he had not even the decency to actively avoid her. Instead-it was-his demeanor was-as though she were non-essential. He did not look past her, he looked through her-looked through them all. Such behavior went well beyond a lack of interest, into genuine lack of recall. Did he not spare a moment to consider their interaction?

She could hardly understand it. She had given the man a glimpse-a feel, even-of her underclothes. She had affected a * _blush_ * during their interaction.

She enquired more vigorously with the concierge: this Athos, did he seek out other company? Was it not a lady's shift that was to his liking?

The concierge had no useful information. He arrived at the inn only to sleep (alone), was gone all day. He paid his bills. He asked for nothing. He had once received a letter, which upon accepting from her, he threw into the nearest fire, unopened. He seemed to prefer being alone. To Madame Concierge's mind, the perfect lodger.

For days Anne spent her time equally divided between three challenging pasttimes: trying to discreetly locate a wise woman, trying to hatch a plan to get this bumpkin's better attention, and praying (if one could call it that) for a better target to soon ride into (and with her, out of) this dusty village.

And then, early one day, the services of a wise woman still not engaged, she woke as the sun was first weakly thinking about dawn, and she knew that whatever was happening to her body ought not happen in her room.

She was in pain. But worse, she found herself in a condition which she had allowed herself to acknowledge very little: she was in fear.

She got herself down the back steps toward the kitchens and the back privy, stopping several times of necessity, and leaned so fully upon the back door that it swung open hard, taking her with it, chucking her out into the going from dark-to-dim morning. She staggered toward the privy and got herself inside.

* * *

He had caught the scent of a change in the air with his rising. His senses, which seemed to have been newly christened only over the past few weeks, spoke to him of cooler weather on its way, and coming-on-wet in the air.

He scowled.

One could train in an unused barn, certainly, but it was nothing to training in the out-of-doors. And he seemed to recall his master suffered from some twinges of the body-memories of battles past-when weather changes like this came about that might well render him more feeble than usual.

He scowled again. Best to use what he could of this day. He dressed and went out into the yard behind the inn to stretch and practice the prior day's lesson. It was early-even for the inn's servants, few if any of whom were yet up and out. But he cared not whether he met another person. He was for his practice. He was for his sword.

He was concentrating on bettering his form when he was distracted (he swore aloud with the inconvenience) by someone stumbling out of the privy, its door hard-slamming shut. Their form was little more than a daub of white nightshirt in the not-yet-banished darkness before full dawn.

He was trying to again find the middle-distance upon which to focus, when he realized that although they had by-and-large followed the path back to the inn, they veered to the far right of it before reaching its back door, and fell, collapsing to the ground.

For a moment he stood his ground. A drunk, no doubt; last night hanging over into this morning. But something like curiosity had found a foothold within him. His senses, heightened, brighter and newer-feeling as though they had been polished-were they to blame for this? Curiosity required interest. And it had been longer than memory when he had truly been interested in anything. He existed in a perpetual state of disinterest, of bored remove. And therefore had avoided curiosity for much of his adult life. And yet here it was, this curiosity-this desire to investigate-strong enough that he could identify it.

He sheathed his sword, (confused annoyance mixed with his piqued interest), and trotted over to see what he could.

Even in the weak light he saw blood on the nightshirt before he saw whose it was. He went down on a knee. She may have been pale, he could not tell. Her eyes lolled about, unfocussed, even when he spoke to her to ask if she needed assistance.

 _Did he remove his gloves and touch her skin? Gauge its temperature?_ (He seemed to recall his nurse using this gesture when he was a child.) His hands did not seem to know where to go: his swordmaster had not instructed him in this.

 _Should she be moved? Should he try and raise her head? Slap her cheeks?_ He knew not. His eyes skittered over her insensate form and found no answers. Clueless, but feeling something must be done, he opened his mouth and bellowed (a louder noise than he had made in years) for Madame Concierge.

"Madame," he said to the lady-the lady he was convinced was about to die upon the ground in front of him, "Madame-you are unwell!"

The woman bleeding on the ground took a great, ragged breath, but still her eyes did not show she knew herself-much less him. Her hair, which must have started the night in a braid of some sort was wild about her head, her lips dry.

The concierge arrived, standing over her two lodgers. Athos looked up at her. "A doctor, call for a doctor!"

The concierge looked at him, unfazed. Looked at the lady on the ground, unmoved by her lodger's condition, seemed to consider prodding her with a toe. "And who's to pay for that?" she asked, "my lady's bill is past due."

He looked from the woman on the ground to the woman standing over her, his mouth unable to shut in his disbelief.

"I will," he told her, shocked at the woman's lack of concern. With outraged (and frightened) fingers he tucked into his purse and fumblingly withdrew a coin. "Send at once." In sterner tones he added, "Pray she lasts until he arrives."

The concierge shrugged and ambled back to the inn to send for a doctor, wondering if her quiet lodger would soon also be paying the lady's overdue bill.

She had not quite gotten to the door when she felt him behind her and had to step quickly aside. He had the lady in his arms-though she appeared too faint to even be holding on to him-and was taking the stairs with all haste to get her up into the warmth and privacy of her (unpaid-for) room.

"Go!" he shouted at the concierge-or perhaps it was not a shout, but for one so taciturn it was as a volley of musketballs-and she obediently increased her pace to a scurry.

* * *

He did not wait for the doctor. Once he was satisfied that help was on its way he straightened his shirt, adjusted his sheath, and left for his master.

He had done what he could, he told himself. His being there could not ensure her recovery. And were she to realize he, a stranger, had seen her in such an indelicate situation-well, such a realization could not make a woman happy, or easy.

But he found it more difficult than usual to locate that core of concentration during the day's workout. And his master, as expected, was suffering from what the weather was about to bring. Athos had to try twice as hard to do half as well as usual.

It was not there habit to stop for luncheon, and yet today both felt the need to break shortly after noon. _Send your boy to the inn_ , he told the master, who lived with a young child that may have been his son (Athos had not bothered to ask), _they will send him back with victuals_.

Half of the hour gone and the boy returned, with bread and cheese-a flagon of better wine (Madame Concierge knew well her best customer), and news that the lady had come to consciousness. Though what ailed her had by no means been cured.

Athos gave a stern nod to this unrequested news, and was pleased to see that following their uncharacteristic repast, his concentration had largely returned to normal.

 **...tbc...**


	5. Third Encounter

He had not been wrong about the weather. When the rain came, it came hard at first, then settled into persistent. Continuous. Everywhere there had been dust there was now mud. The inn began to swell with new lodgers, trapped by coaches unable to assail the sodden, grown-marshy roads.

Doubtless Athos would not have noticed if he had been still able to pursue his training during this time, but the rain did something to his master beyond the aches from long ago injuries. It over-stimulated what senses the blind swordsman had left.

Too much noise, too much motion. The man barely knew if he were coming and going. A day or two into the rain and it became obvious lessons going-forward were useless until the heavens dried up.

Athos was sent back to the inn to practice past lessons, to fret, knowing that his own time away from Chateau la Fere was limited (as it always had been), and that the rain might stay long enough to whittle his six weeks into more like four, and a handful of days.

Even so he resolved to practice, rain notwithstanding.

Locating an unused barn, however, proved not as simple a task as he had hoped. He owned nothing here, was lord to no one. Barns and other outbuildings nearby this crossroads were perpetually in-use, as laborers needed them to be. He, the incognito vicomte de la Fere, was in no position to deprive a man of his income (or same man's family of food) by letting a barn and seeing to it all it held was moved elsewhere as he, Athos, had need of the space. They would have thought him touched to have suggested it.

This led to more time being at and around the inn.

Several days of it passed, him trying to do what he could out in the weather, behind the inn where he might trouble no one and not inspire spectators. When a rapid coolness descended with the continual rain one afternoon he felt he might go upstairs and retrieve something more substantial to wear. He was nearly to his room's door when he half-collided with the little maid employed there as the lowest servant.

Her arms were full of linen to the point her small face was nearly obscured. How she saw her own way up and down the stair was anyone's guess.

"The - lady - " he found himself asking of her, shocked into speaking by their abrupt proximity. "She is much improved?" He had since seen nothing of the woman who had collapsed.

The serving girl looked as though she would rather not have this conversation. She was all eyes and no mouth, so few were her teeth. "I do not know, my sir."

"Not know?" he asked, confused. "Do you not kindle her fire of a morning?" He, himself, had declined such services - preferring to be left alone by the inn's servants, but any lady, he assumed, would require such assistance.

The serving girl looked even more uncomfortable. "No, my sir."

"When did you see her last?" he asked, not knowing what the right questions in this situation were. Not at all satisfied that the girl was proving so ignorant on a subject that he had only passingly meant to engage her upon. "When was she last seen? She has not departed here?"

The servant girl's eyes widened and she muttered an, 'I shall ask my mistress' into the linens before hurriedly scooting off down the back stairs toward the kitchen.

Something seemed to recall to his mind that Madame Concierge had said the lady's rooms were past due. He had a decidedly uncharitable thought, and pushed it aside. Surely not.

He looked down the corridor, testing his unconscious memory to see whether he knew which room was the lady's. Here came the uncharitable thought again: Could the innkeeper be waiting for this lady, her affairs in arrears, to die from her illness? Offering her no aid in the meantime? Thinking that to put out an ill, unpaying tenant might garner their business a poor reputation - but if she were to pass away from her sickness, (and their silent lack of assistance), they might instead have her clothes, her baggage - her anything.

It was a distasteful thought, a beastly plan, no humanity in it, but the more his eyes scanned the corridor, the louder his memory recalled to him the concierge's detached disinterest in summoning a physician. The more a part of himself began to believe it to be true.

He strode toward a door that he felt reasonably certain was hers and knocked upon it, clearing his throat as loudly as he might.

There was no sound of an answer: only the persistent drip of rainwater still sloughing off his own soaked shoulders.

He recalled a night terror Thomas used to have (perhaps still had): that he was in bed, unable to rise, and when he went to call for someone his voice no longer had any volume to his screams.

Athos did not have night terrors, in point of fact he rarely if ever dreamed, and yet at some point he must have taken this fear of Thomas' as his own. He always imagined Thomas on that bed, unable to rise: laid out like the dead, his voice forever silenced.

His brain took a stitch in its cloth, a dimple, and instead of Thomas he saw the lady - laid out as she had been when he last saw her, collapsed just outside the inn's kitchen door upon the ground. Blood on her nightclothes, insensible to the world about her.

How many times as a boy - an older boy, the bigger brother - had he tried to calm Thomas after that dream? Long after Thomas ought not have still been under its spell, him being an older boy, Athos a young man, and his patience more than once spent on his younger brother's terrors; no pity, no comfort within him left.

But yet, in this waking moment, this borrowed image of terror, of helplessness, gripped him. In response to it his breath came half-held, half-heaving. His need-to-know at this point was such that he chose to ignore convention and any manners of comportment he had ever been taught, and opened the door. (Pragmatically reasoning that either no one was within the room beyond, or they were too compromised to answer to his call.)

The room held the scent of squalor, if not the look of it. It was tidy as could be: no food left uneaten upon plates, no mess or clutter about. A week ago it would have been a right tidy little room, most respectable. But not now. The curtains were drawn and the window closed, and the tight stench of illness and blood pervaded the space. Neither taper nor hearth were lit. Athos held the leather of his glove up to his face to fend off the odor and walked toward the figure upon the bed.

He could see nothing to judge the lady's health by in the darkness - he could barely sight her - and so stepped to the window, opened the curtain and pushed it wide; fresh, wet air from out-of-doors flooding the room. Along with light enough by which to see her better.

She was pale beyond fashion - beyond even the powder and paint some women employed (though he knew little of the specifics of such things). Her lips were bloodless. Even in his dim recall of their first encounter in that kitchen his mind assured him her lips had been bright as tart persimmons, her complexion rosy.

Her color was now rather a lack of color. Her hair slack and untended. He saw no drink of any kind within easy reach of her, and at the foot of the bed the counterpane and linens had been pushed down by her feet. A sennight later, and they were still bloody.

No one had been in this room but her. His eyebrows drew together in dislike of that observable fact. For how many days of the seven, he could not be certain. The doctor had been present on the first day, of that he was assured. Her room had been tended at that time, he had seen that for himself when he had brought her to it. But since then he greatly doubted she had been anything but left wholly alone: abandoned. All the while him thinking his intercession on her part was fully discharged.

He looked down to her, unable to tell if she could understand what he was about to do. She was ghostly even in the light. She breathed, but shallowly, as one might with a fever. Her bedding showed the fitful rest she had endured over her solitary days. It was untenable that someone should be treated this way.

But then she had no one to do for her, no family or friends present. She employed no servants of her own.

He was no fool. This inn was not the sort of establishment at which any person with a better place to be would linger. He was here looking for respite from his Fate. He knew nothing could come of it - of his aspirations. One could not change the Fate to which he had been born.

He knew enough of the world to know with some assurance that the condition of her present infirmity might well be the reason she had come to (or been left at) this forgotten place alone. Perhaps she was also at wishing to change her Fate.

A scraping at the doorway showed the little serving girl had come back to find him, supposedly with an (overdue and now unecessary) answer to his questions regarding the lady's health.

"What know you of her?" he asked the girl, his tone firm, his expectation reasonable that the servant girl would know what there was of gossip about the guests.

"She is a widow. Her husband's family has turned their backs on her. She is meant to be traveling back to her own family, but they are displeased at how her marriage has ended and have sent no money for her fare home."

"So she is without an income," he intuited, looking away from the girl and back to the lady. "Has she children?" he asked.

"None but th-this," the girl stammered for a moment to be mentioning ladies' matters to the swordsman, for all that they were standing well in sight of the lady's hemmorhage, "that she has lost."

His mouth grim, he pulled a coin from his purse, knowing now that his coins were the only way to ensure his orders in regards to the young widow were followed. "Do not leave her until I return. Strip the bed of its linens. Find a clean nightshirt among her things. I shall bring her drink." He found himself for a brief moment wishing he had one of his family's servants to depend upon in this moment, but the sensation of longing for the familiar efficiency of la Fere did not last.

"I will fix this, Madame," he said to the lady upon the bed who most likely could not hear or recognize him, with a nod of his head that sent rainwater from his drenched hair toward the bed, and he left the room (window still open) to find and upbraid the Concierge.

 **...tbc...**


	6. Awakening

Madame Concierge walked past the closed door that led into 'The Widow's' room. She smiled to herself, but did not bother to keep her lips clasped over what her rough life had left her in the way of teeth. The room's debt was paid up, a girl had been summoned from the village to sit by turns with the ill 'Lady' within. And every time that village girl passed through the kitchen door to leave, Madame took her cut of the girl's pay.

What, then, could there to be unhappy about? She had always said the quiet lodger was her best customer. He asked so little, and even in the past days, when he had begun making demands, it all came about on a blanket of coin.

And when the Lady's health improved, Madame would be sure to remind the woman of their earlier arrangement: payment for throwing her and the swordsman together.

Little matter that Madame had made no true effort toward doing so, and had planned to let the Lady die, and then sell her belongings until the swordsman stepped in. The Lady could never prove anything.

And if she tried to, well, Madame knew a bit too much of this 'widow's' business.

She could ask payment for keeping that to herself as well.

* * *

It was a contradiction, Athos supposed, that he would insist on spending days within the lady's room, making certain she was properly attended, but would then withdraw of an evening for the sake of some shred of propriety, engaging a village girl (located by Madame Concierge) to act as his proxy evenings and nights.

Pretending as though respectability were somehow not at risk during daylight hours; a single man entering a lady's chamber without an obvious purpose, with no connection to the lady, with no chaperone in place.

It still rained, and he didn't care for societal strictures. The risk to the still-recovery young widow should he leave her unattended outweighed what social damage might be done to the two of them in this out-of-the-way backwater of an inn. He would be certain to apologize to her for his flagrant disregard for her reputation (should she live to require it), just as he would apologize for paying up her bills, and accept-should her sense of morality insist on it-her paying him back to keep her from being indebted to him. (Though he strongly doubted she had coin to do so.)

When he arrived at her room just before dawn (even in the inclement weather unable to alter his swordsman's schedule), he would hear whatever report the village girl had for him of the night, pay her, and tell her to come again.

Then he would sit.

Sometimes, he would pace.

He ordered luncheon delivered to _his_ room, but always managed to be in the passage to intercept it from the inn's serving girl who carried it up to him. Once she was back on the stair he brought it with him in here to the widow's bedside.

He would imagine his muscles and reflexes going slack from inactivity, except they stayed in a perpetual state of tension as he watched over this charge he had taken on.

He sat. And watched.

He watched to the point that he could have sketched her, this young widow, his eyes closed, sketched her as a Master might for a painting. She was pale as white marble in those first days, yet hot to the touch. He had water and cloth with which to try and cool her, encourage her toward rest and sleep.

He concentrated his unpracticed attentions with the cloth upon her face, neck and wrists. It was not only societal strictures that kept him from attempting its use elsewhere.

He had requested the village girl dress her hair in a way that it would not interfere, and it now lay, mostly tidy, in a plait to one side.

She did not always lie upon her back, and yet the swells, the crests and troughs of her profile had become as familiar to him as the arch of his horse's neck on a long journey, the turn and balance of his sword's hilt in his hand.

He thought she improved, though she still did not speak, nor open her eyes with any understanding.

Perhaps he would not need to call for the doctor again.

He ordered a rich broth for her, and bid the village girl feed it to her as he left for the night. His only other orders were that the girl keep her clean and comfortable, and come for him should there be anything pass that gave her distress.

She had taken the broth, he was told in the next morning's report. He had arrived with a book in hand, hoping that at the very least reading a swordplay text might unstring some of the tensions he was fighting against.

He paused after every paragraph to look up and assure himself she still breathed.

* * *

At first she had thought she was drowning. Fallen off the side of a boat? Ducked into water? But the liquid was warm, and when she choked upon it, it ceased momentarily from being re-put in her mouth.

This happened several times before her eyes opened and focused. "What has happened?" she burbled through the broth, asking the unknown girl holding a bowl and spoon.

And the girl told her. She was ill, and had nearly died. The man she had once seen as a potential mark had taken her into his care and support. Her bills were paid. She was safe and able to recover.

She recalled enough (without it being told) to know that somewhere along the way a babe had been lost, to recall that she had reached a point in this room, friendless and alone, where she assumed she was going to die. And she had had no resistance to offer the notion. She was weary, her blood draining away. _I am being punished_ , she had said, almost aloud, though she had never agreed to believe in such a finality of judgement before.

In Sarazin's world (where she had lived since a young girl) believing you were beaten was the same as being so. Tenacity of spirit and contrariness were all that made the difference between survival and hopelessness.

And yet she had done it-even in a half-dead to dying state. She had hooked a new and promising patron. A man already tending to her. She supposed she ought to feel proud of herself, more than a little triumphant. She had tried out some small movements, then, knowing that the longer she was out of the game-the less likely she was to keep such a man.

The attempt at movement proved a failure. And in fact, she felt in herself something new break loose and begin a fresh trickle out from between her legs. As the girl attending her saw to it, she found she could not fight against sleep, and she drifted off. She had spoken no further words aloud.

When next she woke enough to open her eyes to the point they could see with clarity, she thought herself alone. At a sound she turned her head (all there was of her that agreed to answer her brain's requests for movement). The dusty swordsman sat in a chair against the wall. A stiff chair, in which there could have been little feeling of comfort sitting upon. He had turned a page in his book.

She felt her own breaths and thought: perhaps I shall live through this. I shall see Paris again. She lay, thinking those thoughts, for some time, watching the ceiling, other parts of the room he did not occupy.

She felt him looking at her, noticed he was no longer turning pages. And yet he did not address her. He simply sat, looking at her over his book. He was so still as to be part of the room's furnishings, and she realize that their breaths were matched, like twin babes', like mother nursing child. Slow and measured, and without expectation. Mated.

That he did not rise and ask after her well-being puzzled her. That he did not put forth an introduction of himself unsettled her. Perhaps she had mis-understood his motive for aiding her. Perhaps he had aspirations to the Church, and had only meant to assist out of charity and duty, and not at all for personal gain.

And yet the expression about his eyes was not so indifferent. It was keen and expectant, though reserved.

"Sir, I-" she began.

"No," he said, stopping her, though his word was so quietly spoke it may as well have been a sigh.

She looked at him, their breaths still sympatico. She wondered for a moment what she might look like to him. He looked largely the same to her, though perhaps less dusty. His hair had been brushed off of his face this morning, no doubt wet, but had dried at this point in the day (what day, she wondered, was it in this affair?) to falling now and again across his forehead. His sword: belt and scabbard, hung off the back of the chair that held him. The wealthy adorned cuffs of his undersherte came down to the knuckles of his left hand, cast over the chair's narrow wooden arm, and fell beautifully away from his wrist on the hand that held the small book.

"If you decline my thanks, will you then accept a request?"

"What do you need?" his thighs tensed as though he would immediately rise to see to it.

"You can read?"

He nodded a slow assent. "It is a text in Italian."

For awhile she said nothing to this. "How romantic," she said after several moments of silence. "I shall fall asleep to Italian. For all I shall know, it is poetry."

His lip twitched at this, as though it wished to smile. "Do you not wish me to go?" he asked, concern in his tone. "If you are well enough. I should-I should wish to come again, to...assure-"

"I wish for you to read, if you are not otherwise engaged," she did not mean to sound so imploring. "I do not wish...to be alone within this room."

"Of course," he said, what might have been for him, quickly.

He did not reference the earlier danger of her situation. He did not ask her name, nor apologize for his shocking presence at her bedside. He had asked only after _her_ wishes.

Her eyes to the ceiling, she listened to the inhales and exhales he made as he read aloud in Italian. She tried to visualize the weight of his coin purse.

And found she could not. The imagery kept morphing into the beat of his heart, near her ear as he must have stood next to her bed, bent close to her face, and the touch of what must have been his gentleman's hand (for she felt she had seen the lace cuffs before, in closer proximity) upon her once-feverish temple.

She tried to concentrate on her mark, and rather than gaining insight into manipulating him she was left only with the sense that she had not been alone, not abandoned in this room to die. And it was too full a feeling to allow room for any other.


	7. Stories

He came to sit without fail. The rain continued.

He found the weather disappointed him less, now that he had found another occupation. (Though he did still long to continue his training, the burden of postponing it rested less heavily upon him.)

He read aloud, at some point beginning to translate into French the antique Italian fencing text. He could not recall clearly if she had asked him to do so, only, he knew he had begun to feel she might find a better enjoyment of it if she actually understood what was being communicated.

She never asked questions of the text, nor requested he re-read any section she may have missed by falling back to sleep. So he took it upon himself to mark such moments in his memory and turn back to those lost pages when she was again alert and able to be attentive.

* * *

He did not stop reading the fencing text. Books were dear, certainly, and she possessed none of her own (nor could she have read them if she had). But still, endless one-sided discourse about footwork and thrust/parry. Care and selection of a blade. Finding an opponent's weakness. Antique ideas of male comportment and chivalry.

She no longer thought she would die of loss of blood. It would be, instead, this dry-as-a-crone text of his that would do her in.  
He was not conversational. She had no idea of what took place beyond the room's four walls, and it seemed quite clear to her that it was very likely he did either-for all that he had begun taking his own meals apart from her (and so she assumed he was eating downstairs among the others in the common room, and observing the lives of those around him).

The constant rain and damp began to wear upon her. It seemed an age since she had seen the sun. A man so discreet that she had learned not a thing about him personally was a man hard to grift. What secrets of value to Sarazin could she hope to possess if even the blandest of personal information were held so closely to his chest?

And yet now he held at least several of her secrets. And so perhaps this discretion should encourage her.

And yet, and yet in this room during the hours with the girl he had hired, when he had left and his voice was not speaking on the finer points of attack with a blade, she felt colder. Felt the lack of him, even as she had come to think of him as this droning, passionless pedagogue.

In his absence she thought more on the notion that following great pain and effort many women in her position had a child to show for such difficult work.

But of course she didn't want a child. Of course any child of hers was better for never having set foot in the world she occupied. She did not want to find herself in a position of using her own flesh and blood-of being tempted to use her own babe-as a card she might play in their survival.

She did not wish the opportunity to make the same choice as had her mother.

She would never know if the lost babe was boy child or girl. She knew only that the life she led was a life for one, a lifestyle of survival skills that were effective only insofar as she remained alone.

Why this simple, long-known truth should agitate her she refused to dedicate headspace to contemplating.

Why the swordsman's reasoned, gentle voice should now make her feel like jumping out of her own skin (a movement she could not hope to presently contemplate), she found she had plenty of unoccupied moments to chew upon.

* * *

She had begun to feel up to taking more control over the hired girl, sending her for things she might desire, or asking for her to go and stand outside of the room for several minutes.

She had finally stopped bleeding, and she knew she must take it as a sign and signal that she must return herself to work. She could imagine no man who might be happy to support her while she remained indefinitely weak and ill. She must find her way (and quickly) back to being that tempting vessel Sarazin had fashioned her into. She must (and it ached, but she pushed it away to think of it) contrive a way for him to bed her. Such a plan was necesary to survival. Necessary to keep the fish once hooked.

A woman without physical and sensual allurements; useless to anyone, save perhaps a life as a laundress. That, she could not risk becoming. She had taken it up herself to work toward walking alone about the room-when the girl and the swordsman were not there. Though her work was to be done in a bed, her strength to enact his seduction toward said bed must be proved first.

She was not so foolish as to believe it was taking anything less than full minutes between her taking steps. Not so foolish as to overlook her need to move grasping hand from furniture to wall to bedstead to affect something resembling balance.

It was difficult, frustrating, and exhausting. She was a-prickle in sweat, whatever the girl had done to her hair that morning nothing but a memory now. Her legs vibrated and shook-though she could feel in her illness that she had lost valuable body weight and inches off her curves. Her hands grew clammy, and had their been a witness to her exertion she would have been humiliated. But she was determined to persevere. She was determined to bury any thought of the almost-child that had nearly stolen her life along with losing its own. Determined to swallow back any hesitance her body's current pain and tenderness brought to her mind when thinking of carnal relations, much less energetic ones. Determined to mastermind the best way of beguiling this sword-loving backward mark into a bed.

At least she meant to be, as soon as she could recover her breath and trust her limbs to hold her upright. Her chest heaved with her efforts though she wore no corset to restrict her breathing, and was, in fact, still in her nightdress. She had both hands to the chair arms of the chair that he chose to sit upon when he stayed with her, and it felt as though to remove even one might prove a mistake. Even to reach out toward the bed, barely three feet beyond.

She heard the girl outside the door shift, reminded herself she had no plans to call upon her for assistance. If I fall she can jolly well pick me up off the floor, she thought, pretending (even while alone) to a steel in her eye she did not possess.

But momentarily it became apparent the girl shifted because she had been caught out by the swordsman's arrival. He was displeased the girl was not within.

She reached-because she had no option-toward the bed (which seemed to be floating far, farther away). Her eyelids fluttered and spasmed. She was alongside the bed-not near any post. Committing to the move, she reached as best she could, not wishing him to see her out of the bed like this; pitiful, weak, in need.

The door swung open by his arm's push-in just as she attempted to complete her move. Both of her hands held nothing as she wobbled away from his chair and back toward where she had for so long rested, but he arrived just in time to see her half-swoon on her way to the floor.

His arms caught her midsection before it fell limp and inelegant upon the cusp of the covers. She shook all-over, unable to control her body's failing reaction to her demands upon it.

In a way that was wholly unlike her, something in her responded to the delicacy, the encompassing warmth of his present hold upon her, and she spoke consciously, though without consideration.

* * *

He had made it through the door in time to catch the young widow as she fell, but the unexpected dead weight of her near-faint had him to his knees, his arms wrapped intimately-unexpectedly-unfamiliarly-about her. Her head had come to rest upon his biceps. But her eyes did not close. They fluttered a moment and then, in what appeared to him to be great pain, and possibly anguish, she asked; "Why are you doing this? It was not your child."

"No," he agreed with her, his voice soft. They had never spoken of the lost child between the two of them. "But it was yours," he said, not entirely certain what such a statement might mean, only that it felt true to him. True, in that moment that whatever was of importance to her, was now of importance to him.

He had no responsibility in regard to that small life, and yet he felt the pull of it, as it pulled, surely, upon her.

* * *

His eyes were so clear as he spoke to her. Like water from a rich man's salver. When he read they tended to be downcast, hooded from her view. But now she looked up, into them. Why would he say such a thing? He could not mean it. And yet he said it, after catching her. Catching her from falling in this wretched state, when she couldn't possibly appear less desireable.

She moved to get herself into the bed, and he assisted. His hands were not stiff, nor formal as his bearing usually bespoke. They were gentle, soft as a young lover's, but not at all imploring. They were hands that wished nothing more than to be of use.

She chastised herself for relaxing at this discovery. Felt as though she ought to bring her will to bear in refusing to allow such a response from her body. What need had she to allow herself to feel like a girl grudgingly complicit in her cage? Dreading her eventual fate at the hands of a man she must willingly seduced?

But she was tired. She had no time for internal monologues. No doubt he would begin to read. Her eyes slid closed.

She did not last to see him look up from his text, contemplate the air between them, and study her full-on over the book's binding from his place in the chair.

* * *

She did not know how much later it was that she awoke. The sounds of his voice, first in the Italian, then in the French translation, pulled her out of her sleep. She opened her eyes.

There he was: well-made boots but well-worn, gauntlets tucked at his waist, always looking as though at any moment he might burst into _botta-in-tempo_ ; sword never from his side even when it hung upon the chair.

The passage he translated sounded like one of an hundred others he had read aloud. She felt the panic of this room, this situation-this probably still-necessary seduction of him-begin to weigh upon her too heavily.

"You must stop," she told him, her mind unwillingly full of the rhetoric of swordplay. "Tell me a story," she said, suggesting possibilities without entertaining the notion that he might refuse her. "Something of your childhood. Something of your home. ...The day you chose to travel here."

He stopped in his translation. He looked up, his face showed surprise, as if he had not expected to find her _stringering_ him so, directing his present action with an opposite action of her own.

But his recovery was swift. "And if that story involves the sword?" he asked, eyebrow flicking up in one of the more lively facial reactions she had yet seen from him. His eyes betrayed a new curiosity within them.

"At least have it be absent _Signor_ Egnatius," she derided the author of his text, her voice cool and throaty.

"Very well," he began, his eyebrow arched again as his lips nearly drew into a curl.

She would have preferred to watch him, to monitor him for other new facial expressions, new casts to his eyes, but found she had not the further strength for it. She closed her eyes as he began to speak-now without a text as his guide. She thought of her identity here, of Anne's story and widowhood. Anne's desire for a happier ending. She listened as he spoke with all she had.

Out-of-doors, the rain began to dissipate.

 _ **...tbc...**_

* * *

NOTE: * _stringering_ \- controlling an opponent's blade by maintaining contact (such as opposition) to it  
* _botta-in-tempo_ \- (attack in time) attacking whilst an opponent is distracted with fending off a parry, bind, or feint

Actions


	8. Dreams

He was having dreams.

Deeply unsettling dreams.

Not nightmares-no, Thomas' experience with those allowed Athos to rule out that classification for his own nightly episodes.

Neither were they lust-fueled fantasies. (He recognized those for what they were.)

These dreams were only unsettling upon waking. At night, he dreamed...of happiness. He dreamed of the most ridiculously banal tasks. Walking the grounds of La Fere and Pinon. Sitting beneath a tree in the autumn. Looking over the estate's account ledger. Eating a bun at the family table. Adding a log to the fire on a cold winter's night.

He asked his swordmaster for guidance (without detailing these dreams): how ought one to understand, to interpret one's dreams?

"I am no mystic," the blind sword master had told him, "I have never believed in dreams as portents or portals of any kind. Such dreams come from within you. If they are messages, predictions of a sort, they are sent from dreaming you to waking you. A man cannot dream what is not already within him, however sleeping it might yet be."

Athos was pleased to find the swordmaster's suggestions to be reasonable, rather than rooted in divination or visions. But he wrestled within himself over nonetheless.  
Those banal tasks that now evoked such happiness within him whilst he slept all included (even if she were just sitting, sharing a room with him and nothing else) Anne.

* * *

She was getting better. She knew this for certain when the dusty swordsman no longer came to sit in her room.

At first she had panicked, thinking her catch had slipped the line. She'd refused having her dinner brought upstairs to her room. When she descended to try and see if he were still at the inn, she was relieved to see him seated alone (always alone, him). His reaction to her joining him at table was encouraging, and so they had dined downstairs in the inn's main room for many nights, now.

But the day was coming when even he would have to admit she was fully well and healed, and if she had not hooked him in a way more permanent she would have to decide upon another way to pay her room and board, or steal funds to get her back to Paris, and Sarazin.

These were the thoughts that plagued her at night. Or at least these were the thoughts she told herself plagued her at night. Certainly, Sarazin's especial protege would be awake poring over strategy, unable to sleep because she had no stability in her present situation.

Not because she had waked in the early morning as she heard this swordsman's steps pass by her door on his way to practice with his swordmaster, and at hearing them pause for the briefest moment on the other side, she shocked herself by wondering what might happen if he had pushed in.

Began to wonder and daydream about what it might be like to genuinely be with such a man. Had weak moments of dreaming what it might truly be like to be Anne, the Anne of her cover story, with this man.

She knew that she needed him in her bed if she wished to survive, but she was startled to learn there was a new voice shouting within her alongside the familiar one of survival at any cost. A petitioning voice, deliberate and mournful at times-at others urgent and surreal-letting her know that something within her wanted him more, and differently, than just that.

It was like a thirst, the kind of which you don't notice until it is just about to consume you.

It was a thirst of having been in the cold, the brutal cold since you were a child, and now, being grown, longing to come indoors, into cozy warmth and a drink of brandy.

The name of the dusty swordsman, she had learned, was Athos. He was the oldest son in his family, and he was not married. He cared little for much of anything in the way of company. He appeared to enjoy what conversation she shared with him, but little to nothing of others'. He lived and breathed for the sword. It was something of an accomplishment to get him to laugh aloud.

And he never opened his letters.

* * *

He practiced.

He responded with new and different steps, parries, thrusts, as the swordmaster (now recovered from the recent rain and damp) instructed him.

The most recent letter that had come to him he had not immediately thrown on the fire. Instead he had thrust it, unopened, within his doublet. It was still there, the wax growing softer as his body's heat and the doublet grew warm with his concentrated exertion.

Perhaps it had been the way her eyes-across the table from him-had caught and sparked on seeing Madame Concierge place it into his hands. Perhaps in that moment it had become more of a talisman of Anne than just another letter likely enquiring when he was coming home.

Perhaps it was that the happiness of his nightly dreaming had begun to seep over into the waking world.

Perhaps it was that burning an unopened letter from his family in front of a woman whose husband was dead and whose family had disowned her struck him as rudely unfeeling.

He powered on, allowing in only the sound of the swordmaster's voice, re-thinking nothing that was asked of him. Willing his body to memorize the paces he was being put-through. Keeping his thoughts, his speculations out of the moment.

The blade was part of him, it had grown in his hand as might a finger from a palm or a hair on his head, and right now, it was the part he gave precedence over all others.

* * *

It had been a walk of some distance from the inn (she had no horse, nor way of hiring one), but she had managed to follow him, to discover where he went each day.

It was a dismal patch of a place. Shack and two equally hovel-like other buildings. To call it a farm would be far too grand. The man Athos had traveled from home to confer on his further instruction of the sword had squinty, milky eyes. His voice wheezed and rasped.

He did not appear substantial enough to hold a blade himself.

He sat upon the shack's stone stoop and instructed a man he could not see, using senses she could not possibly credit-other than that the man seemed to comprehend exactly where and in what his pupil needed correction.

She kept to what amounted to the sparse treeline, and watched on.

She had seen sword fights before, of course she had. And knives, and blades of every kind in the slums of Paris. Sarazin had got himself what he thought a fine sword and never went anywhere without it. He fancied himself something of a threat with it.

But she could see now, watching on, what she had known for swordplay before was the difference between flour and sugar. Dry and tasteless (though it alone can get the job done), when here, watching Athos, she saw sugar: sweet and exciting, tempting and crystallized.

He responded perfectly to his master's voice. The blade and the body that wielded it, the concentration-it was a symphony of fluid perfection.

When he finished she could not help herself, she stepped from the treeline.

"We are not alone," the swordmaster said, as Athos stood panting in-between exertions.

He looked up from where he had his hands to his knees and smiled. He did not seem to mind her having followed him, or perhaps in this moment he did not realize how she had come to be there.

"What do you think, then?" he asked, straightening himself and throwing his head slightly back to get his hair off his forehead.

"It was something-" she began, not sure what to say. "It was like poetry," she told him, not even trying to remove the awe from her tone.

" _Italian_ poetry?" he asked, still smiling, making a joke about her original comments on the text he had read to her on her sick bed.

"Ah, mistress is an admirer of Signor Egnatius!" the blind swordmaster announced, and tapped his walking stick on the ground three times.

She laughed.

And Athos, Athos laughed.

* * *

When the time came that he was finished for the day-that the ailing swordmaster could teach no more for the moment, Athos felt he could not let her walk all the way back to the inn. She looked well enough-her color was rosy, as it had been upon their first meeting. Her lips again bright. And her eyes were alert and engaged.

Nonetheless, he decided to ride her back on his horse, and let her off near the inn, so that they would not return together at the same time.

She accepted.

They were still among the rural outskirts of the village proper, houses were sparse, people were only now coming in from their day's work. They passed but few of them on the worn track.

There was no need to ride quickly, and so she sat, legs to one side, in front of him. At her word that she would rather not have the reins, he had taken them, of necessity putting his arms about her (luckily, he thought-if she were to slip or fall).

Their mood was jolly, light. They chatted, and once or twice she even teased (something that he surprised himself by liking). There was nothing ill-at-ease between them.

And then her face was fully toward him, and her breath was something he could feel exhaling from her nose, but also inhaled through her lungs (about which his arms were placed).

And she kissed him.

It was not a nanny's kiss, though he had known something of those. Nor was it the kiss everyone clapped he and Catherine into sharing under a Christmas mistletoe each year since they had been children.

Nor was it like other kisses he had known.

It tasted sweet and perfect and tentative, and it made him feel like someone had thrown open a door to a dank, unlighted room out onto a chill winter morning; the sun blazing off the snow and into your eyes until you could hardly open them for its glory, the chill grabbing your body and reminding it you were alive.

But "No," he said, sorry to lose the taste of it. "No, you don't-you don't have to do this." He looked down, his eyes off to the side. His voice had been half-taken from him by the surprise, the brisk but bracing sensation that overcame him.

He knew he was not embracing her; his arms occupied the position they did purely out of utility, but it was a feeling he could not ignore.

* * *

She stopped immediately at his protest and did not speak again until they were in sight of the inn.

Her silence had not been the product of his refusal. No, only, his response had given her pause as she realized-quite chillingly-that she had not schemed to create a situation in which she could kiss him. There had been no plan for it. There had been no motive, no careful plotting to it. She had some time ago decided he was not a man to be advanced upon in any way so obvious. He would be, rather, a man she must coax to take the initiative himself, the one to act-not to be acted upon. She could lead him to the cliff, but must not make him jump.

To hurry such a man was to lose him.

 _Had it been this Anne, this built and acted character with the disapproving family and dead husband-had she thrown caution out the window in an act of abandon and kissed Athos?_

 _Or had it been that other woman that occupied her body? The girl with the name her mother called her that she told herself she could not remember?_

They had been so physically close on the ride, the things they spoke of, the easy camaraderie, the open-ness that seemed to have come over his face when he looked at her.

She had wanted his mouth on hers the way she had wanted warmth when she was cold, bread when she was hungry, cheese when she had only bread, and coin when her purse was light. He had given her kindness, deference without strings. He had shown her compassion when it was something for which she had never known to wish. Attachment when she had been trained to believe it the thing most to fear.

And as she sat there between his arms, his doublet filthy from his sword work, uncomfortable on a horse saddled for one, she had wanted his mouth, his eyes always to be on her, his laugh always in her ears.

But she had not meant to kiss him.


End file.
